List of Lincoln City F.C. seasons

[3] Their highest finishing position – fifth in the Second Division – was achieved in 1901–02, and in the same season they reached the last 16 of the FA Cup for the third time.

[11] They combined it with an FA Cup run in which they eliminated three Football League teams, including Championship runners-up Brighton & Hove Albion, before a 1–0 win away to Premier League club Burnley made them the first non-league club since 1913–14 to reach the quarter-finals;[12] in the quarter-final, they lost 5–0 away to Arsenal.

[13] In their first season back, they made their first competitive trip to Wembley Stadium, where they beat Shrewsbury Town 1–0 to win the EFL Trophy,[14] and reached the play-offs, in which they lost to Exeter City.

[3] The table details Lincoln City's achievements in senior first-team competition from their first appearance in the FA Cup in 1884–85 to the end of the most recently completed season.

Details of abandoned competitions – The Combination in 1888–89 and the 1939–40 Football League – are shown in italics and appropriately footnoted.

Eleven young men in striped shirts and plain shorts and one older man wearing a suit pose for a team photo. Three sit on the floor, two cross-legged. Four sit on chairs behind, each in a different, casual pose. One has his foot on a football. At the back, the older man and the remaining young men stand, hands on hips or resting on the chairs.
The Lincoln City F.C. team of 1889–90, founder members of the Midland League